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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy
Reflections on the Puritan Revolution (1986) examines the damage
done by the Puritans during the English Civil War, and the enormous
artistic losses England suffered from their activities. The
Puritans smashed stained glass, monuments, sculpture, brasses in
cathedrals and churches; they destroyed organs, dispersed the
choirs and the music. They sold the King's art collections,
pictures, statues, plate, gems and jewels abroad, and broke up the
Coronation regalia. They closed down the theatres and ended
Caroline poetry. The greatest composer and most promising scientist
of the age were among the many lives lost; and this all besides the
ruin of palaces, castles and mansions.
A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (1954)
examines the large range of political doctrines which played their
part in the English revolution - a period when modern democratic
ideas began. The political literature of the period between 1645,
when the Levellers first seized upon the revolution's wider
implications, and 1660, when Charles II restored the monarchy to
power, is here studied in detail.
Cromwell and Communism (1930) examines the English revolution
against the absolute monarchy of Charles I. It looks at the
economic and social conditions prevailing at the time, the first
beginnings of dissent and the religious and political aims of the
Parliamentarian side in the revolution and subsequent civil war.
The various sects are examined, including the Levellers and their
democratic, atheistic and communistic ideals.
Allegiance in Church and State (1928) examines the evolution of
ideas and ideals, their relation to political and economic events,
and their influence on friends and foes in seventeenth-century
England - which witnessed the beginning of both the constitutional
and the intellectual transition from the old order to the new. It
takes a careful look at the religious and particularly political
ideas of the Nonjurors, a sect that argued for the moral
foundations of a State and the sacredness of moral obligations in
public life.
Leveller Manifestoes (1944) is a collection of primary manifestoes
issued by the Levellers, the group which played an active and
influential role in the English revolution of 1642-49. This book
collects together rare pamphlets and tracts that are seldom
available, and certainly not in one place for ease of research.
Revisiting Guy Debord's seminal work, The Society of the Spectacle
(1967), Eric-John Russell breathes new life into a text which
directly preceded and informed the revolutionary fervour of May
1968. Deepening the analysis between Debord and Marx by revealing
the centrality of Hegel's speculative logic to both, he traces
Debord's intellectual debt to Hegel in a way that treads new ground
for critical theory. Drawing extensively from The Phenomenology of
Spirit (1807) and Science of Logic (1812), this book illustrates
the lasting impact of Debord's critical theory of 20th-century
capitalism and reveals new possibilities for the critique of
capitalism.
What is the relation between our selfhood and appearing? Our
embodiment positions us in the world, situating us as an object
among its visible objects. Yet, by opening and shutting our eyes,
we can make the visible world appear and disappear-a fact that
convinces us that the world is in us. Thus, we have to assert with
Merleau-Ponty that we are in the world that is in us: the two are
intertwined. Author James Mensch employs the insights of Jan
Patocka's asubjective phenomenology to understand this double
relationship of being-in. In this volume, he shows how this
relation constitutes the reality of our selfhood, shaping our
social and political interactions as well as the violence that
constantly threatens to undermine them.
Loren Lomasky is a leading advocate of a rights-based libertarian
approach to political and social issues. This volume collects
fifteen of his articles that have appeared since his influential
volume Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (OUP, 1987)
alongside one new essay. The volume represents Lomasky's more
recent efforts at constructing the underpinnings of liberal rights
theory, in which he formulates a series of questions about the
nature and scope of rights and rights holders. Among the questions
Lomasky addresses: In what way is classical utilitarianism
fundamentally illiberal? To what extent might utilitarian
cost-benefit analyses be admissible within rights-upholding
political theory? Does it even make sense to speak of maximizing
liberty? How can this be understood in Hobbesian, Kantian, and
Rawlsian theoretical settings? In a world in which rights-talk is
ubiquitous, what is the role of traditional virtues such as loyalty
and charity? Is it inconsistent to espouse both an austere
classical liberalism and a social safety net? Liberalism is most
often presented as a theory about the internal contours of the
state, but how does it speak to the relationships between one state
and another? Between the state and would-be immigrants? In a world
displaying massive cross-border inequalities, does justice require
the extension of aid from the rich to the poor? The book opens with
an unpublished essay, "Everything Old is New Again: The Death and
Rebirth of Classical Liberalism," which features a history of the
century-long decline of traditional liberalism and its remarkable,
unanticipated return to vitality in the second half of the 20th
century. It then offers the prospectus for a libertarian research
program for the next half century. "Lomasky is one of the most
brilliant political philosophers of his generation and also has a
great gift with the pen. He instead picks away at bad arguments and
bad rhetoric whether in general agreement with his priors or not.
And he likes to entertain unusual twists on arguments. The upshot
is a wonderful journey through deep questions in political
philosophy and organization. "-Peter Boettke, University Professor
of Economics & Philosophy, George Mason University
Confronting Capital and Empire inquires into the relationship
between philosophy, politics and capitalism by rethinking Kyoto
School philosophy in relation to history. The Kyoto School was an
influential group of Japanese philosophers loosely related to Kyoto
Imperial University's philosophy department, including such diverse
thinkers as Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Nakai Masakazu and
Tosaka Jun. Confronting Capital and Empire presents a new
perspective on the Kyoto School by bringing the school into
dialogue with Marx and the underlying questions of Marxist theory.
The volume brings together essays that analyse Kyoto School
thinkers through a Marxian and/or critical theoretical perspective,
asking: in what ways did Kyoto School thinkers engage with their
historical moment? What were the political possibilities immanent
in their thought? And how does Kyoto School philosophy speak to the
pressing historical and political questions of our own moment?
Suvin's 'X-Ray' of Socialist Yugoslavia offers an indispensable
overview of a unique and often overlooked twentieth-century
socialism. It shows that the plebeian surge of revolutionary
self-determination was halted in SFR Yugoslavia by 1965; that
between 1965- 72 there was a confused and hidden but still
open-ended clash; and that by 1972 the oligarchy in power was
closed and static, leading to failure. The underlying reasons of
this failure are analysed in a melding of semiotics and political
history, which points beyond Yugoslavia - including its
achievements and degeneration - to show how political and economic
democracy fail when pursued in isolation. The emphasis on socialist
Yugoslavia is at various points embedded into a wider historical
and theoretical frame, including Left debates about the party,
sociological debates about classes, and Marx's great foray against
a religious State doctrine in The Jewish Question.
Historically speaking, our vices, like our virtues, have come in
two basic forms: intellectual and moral. One of the main purposes
of this book is to analyze a set of specifically political vices
that have not been given sufficient attention within political
theory but that nonetheless pose enduring challenges to the
sustainability of free and equitable political relationships of
various kinds. Political vices like hubris, willful blindness, and
recalcitrance are persistent dispositions of character and conduct
that imperil both the functioning of democratic institutions and
the trust that a diverse citizenry has in the ability of those
institutions to secure a just political order of equal moral
standing, reciprocal freedom, and human dignity. Political vices
embody a repudiation of the reciprocal conditions of politics and,
as a consequence of this, they represent a standing challenge to
the principles and values of the mixed political regime we call
liberal-democracy. Mark Button shows how political vices not only
carry out discrete forms of injustice but also facilitate the
habituation in and indifference toward systemic forms of social and
political injustice. They do so through excesses and deficiencies
in human sensory and communicative capacities relating to voice
(hubris), vision (moral blindness), and listening (recalcitrance).
Drawing on a wide range of intellectual resources, including
ancient Greek tragedy, social psychology, moral epistemology, and
democratic theory, Political Vices gives new consideration to a
list of "deadly vices" that contemporary political societies can
neither ignore as a matter of personal "sin" nor publicly disregard
as a matter of mere bad choice, and it provides a democratic
account that outlines how citizens can best contend with our most
troubling political vices without undermining core commitments to
liberalism or pluralism.
The German-Austrian social theorist and philosopher Leo Kofler
(1907-1995) represents what Oskar Negt once called 'unmutilated,
living Marxism'. Throughout his life he dealt with issues of
history and modernity, Marxist philosophy and the critique of
ideology, philosophical anthropology and aesthetics. In this
volume, author and Kofler biographer Christoph Junke elucidates the
contours of his philosophy of praxis, traces an arc from the
socialist classics to postmodernism, and outlines the socialist
humanist thinker's enduring relevance. The book also includes six
essays by Leo Kofler published in English for the first time. The
main work was first published in German as Leo Koflers Philosophie
der Praxis: Eine Einfuhrung in sein Denken by Laika Verlag, 2015,
ISBN 978-944233-33-8. Copyright by Laika Verlag.
Solidarity Beyond Borders is a collection on international ethics
by a multidisciplinary team of scholars from four continents. The
volume explores ethical and political dimensions of transnational
solidarity in the emerging multipolar world. Analyzing global
challenges of the world plagued by poverty, diseases, injustice,
inequality and environmental degradation, the contributors - rooted
in diverse cultures and ethical traditions - voice their support
for 'solidarity beyond borders'. Bringing to light both universally
shared ethical insights as well as the irreducible diversity of
ethical perceptions of particular problems helps the reader to
appreciate the chances and the challenges that the global community
- more interconnected and yet more ideologically fragmented than
ever before - faces in the coming decades. Solidarity Beyond
Borders exemplifies an innovative approach to the key issues of
global ethics which takes into account the processes of economic
globalization, leading to an ever deeper interdependence of peoples
and states, as well as the increasing cultural and ideological
fragmentation which characterize the emerging multipolar world
order.
Dialogue and the New Cosmopolitanism: Conversations with Edward
Demenchonok stands in opposition to the doctrine that might makes
right and that the purpose of politics is to establish domination
over others rather than justice and the good life for all. In the
pursuit of the latter goal, the book stresses the importance of
dialogue with participants who take seriously the views and
interests of others and who seek to reach a fair solution. In this
sense, the book supports the idea of cosmopolitanism, which-by
contrast to empire-involves multi-lateral cooperation and thus the
quest for a just cosmopolis. The international contributors to this
volume, with their varied perspectives, are all committed to this
same quest. Edited by Fred Dallmayr, the chapters take the form of
conversations with Edward Demenchonok, a well-known practitioner of
international and cross-cultural philosophy. The conversations are
structured in parts that stress the philosophical, anthropological,
cultural, and ethical dimensions of global dialogue. In our
conflicted world, it is inspiring to find so many authors from
different places agreeing on a shared vision.
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